


the first thing to go (and to return again)

by dizzywhiz



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Feelings, Happy Ending, Introspection, M/M, Post-S6 Breakup, Reunion Fic, at least the potential for it, but Kurt stays in NYC, instead of going back to Ohio
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 07:54:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29275005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dizzywhiz/pseuds/dizzywhiz
Summary: After breaking off his engagement, Kurt deals with his regrets while remaining in the city where everything went wrong, hitting rock bottom of his loneliness. But whether he feels he deserves it or not, maybe forgiving himself is what Kurt needs to pick up the pieces again, leading him back to rediscover and to reclaim what he once had.
Relationships: Blaine Anderson/Kurt Hummel
Comments: 13
Kudos: 47





	the first thing to go (and to return again)

**Author's Note:**

> phew, hi! so yesterday I posted this little idea on tumblr saying I wasn't actually going to write it bc it felt too angsty, but a couple people said I should. I've been in a bit of a writing funk where I've barely written a single word since my last oneshot, and so I figured I should take inspiration wherever it came and let this come out of me this afternoon. whether it's anything good or not, this is what happened!
> 
> inspired by the song "first thing to go" by hayley williams, though I spun it into a semi-happy ending, because I just needed to. the song is really, really beautiful, and I'd definitely recommend it along with her whole new album.
> 
> [in fact, here is a post on my blog with links to the song & my own cover of it!](https://kurtstinypurse.tumblr.com/post/642685111450697728/so-i-hope-this-isnt-too-weird-but-i-wanted-to)
> 
> AU that diverges from canon after Kurt & Blaine break off their engagement. let me know what you think :-)

The realization hits him out of nowhere, and it hits him all at once. 

He can’t remember the sound of Blaine’s voice. 

He remembers parts of it: its warmth and its softness in the morning, its roughness and its brokenness, late at night. And of course, its power and its melody, on a stage, and its reverence when saying Kurt’s name, too, like the very word has a weight and a meaning all on its own. 

He remembers the words - not all of them, of course, but the important ones. 

_I love you._

_I was with someone._

_Will you marry me?_

_I will never forgive you for this._

But more than anything, these glimpses are all recollections of the way these moments made Kurt _feel._ They’re bits, and they’re pieces, but these pieces aren’t enough to put back together to create the whole picture again. It’s fragmented, jagged, even their happier moments shattered by Kurt’s own words of anger and of malice, the drips and dredges of resentment sharp and pointed, wrecking.

There’s echoes of Blaine’s, too. The trembles and tremors of regret and betrayal, the thickness of his pain and of his heartbreak, untethered and spiraling.

In all of it, though, the sound is missing.

Kurt can remember vividly the feeling of Blaine’s hands everywhere, of Blaine’s body underneath him, open and wanting or sated and relaxed. He can remember Blaine’s hugs, his caresses, the way their palms pressed against each other and fingers slotted together. There’s the melted golden honey of his eyes, the brightness of his smile, the soft spring of his curls.

All of it, Kurt knows as well as ever.

So why is Blaine’s _voice_ the first thing to go from his memory, when it’s the very thing that brought them together, knitting them in melodies and tying them in lyrics, connecting and securing them so closely in the first place?

It’s a cruel, biting irony, but it’s one that Kurt knows he deserves.

He’s the one that caused this, after all.

Kurt is the one who had said the three words that broke them, _maybe I don’t,_ the one who continued to hammer it in after, the one who remained sitting at the table and vibrated with anger, not heartbreak, as Blaine got up and rushed into the rain in tears. He’s the one who didn’t go home, who slept on Elliott’s couch for the better part of a week, who silently allowed Blaine the time to clear out his things and to leave.

He wonders if he had ever actually meant it, even in the moment itself.

What if he had waited to eat first, waited to _breathe?_ What if Blaine hadn’t been late to their dinner reservation, or what if Kurt had cut him the tiniest shred of slack? What if they had talked, _really_ talked, at any point along the way instead of letting every problem they ever had bubble under the surface until it erupted, leaving everything they had worked to build in instantaneous ruins?

Would he still be here, time slowly ticking by in his loneliness, finding the echoes of Blaine everywhere he goes, everywhere he looks?

He tries not to consider these things - the _what ifs_ and the maybes. It’s not like they help, not like they matter or make any sort of difference. Either way, Kurt is still alone in the tiny studio he moved into, alone at NYADA, alone in the city.

Alone in his head, now, without the entirety of Blaine there in his memories, not the same without his voice.

Videos, voicemails, recordings - they aren’t the same. They feel like cheating, for one thing, reclaiming a piece of Blaine that Blaine isn’t able to consent to give. But beyond that, they aren’t the same. These captured images and sounds of the past are only that: the past. They feel still, detached, stale, while Blaine was always so utterly full of _life._

Still is, probably.

Kurt hopes desperately that Blaine is still full of life, hopes Blaine has reclaimed his happiness after a struggle and a hurt deep enough to cause his fall from NYADA, back to Ohio, where neither of them had expected to ever be again for any extended period of time.

When Kurt heard that Blaine had been kicked out and left the city entirely, he had cycled through the guilt, the regret, the self-hatred, landed on a brief, selfish thought to follow Blaine home, to come up with a reason to go back to Ohio and to win him back and to forget any of this ever happened.

But Blaine deserves life, deserves happiness, deserves the glowing sweetness of all the love in the world, and Kurt hadn’t been able to truly give him that at any point in their engagement, doesn’t feel like he deserves even the chance to try again.

After all, there would be no fairness in forcing the forgiveness Blaine had sworn never to give.

So instead, Kurt stays in the city despite the aches in his chest and in his heart and in his soul, and he pours everything he has into school and into work, feigning confidence until it becomes real again. He finds success there, in performances and showcases at school and in a promotion at work, but it’s all hollow, impersonal.

There’s something missing.

But Kurt holds on, and slowly, the pieces begin to recover themselves and fit back together - not of his memory, but of the life he once had and of the company he had spent it with. 

It starts with Rachel’s return to the city, nearly a year after everything had fallen apart, and it’s an instant salve for Kurt’s loneliness. She brings along all of her dramatics and her neuroses, but there’s a new maturity to her, too, a breath of fresh air, her head held high despite her own fall from success. Kurt finds comfort in everything she is, even the parts of her that used to infuriate him. It’s companionship, and it’s normalcy, and it’s a connection to the happiness the city used to bring him, a feeling he hopes he can find again. 

It makes most sense for the two of them to live together again, and so Kurt abandons his tiny, crumbling studio in favor of a cramped two-bedroom with actual walls, and it feels like they’re moving up in the world, finally, _finally._

Not long after, Kurt works up the courage to reach out to Elliott and Dani again, having unintentionally left them in the wreckage of his stability. They start making music together again, and it’s more casual than before, but it’s more fun than before, too. There aren’t any goals to strive for, any audiences to win over or to keep, and it’s easy, comfortable, familiar.

Rachel lands a role in a promising new off-Broadway production, and she begins inviting Kurt to parties and socials and outings, and he forces himself to go more often than not. He doesn’t particularly hit it off with anyone in her new circles, but he always ends up flushed and laughing and light, an infinite improvement of the lonely nights spent in the darkness of his solitude.

Things are getting better.

At some point, Kurt begins to feel like a human again, to feel like _himself,_ no longer just a shell of his regrets. He no longer exists to punish himself for his mistakes, no longer hinges his worth - or lack thereof - upon the way he treated Blaine, the words he said and the walls he built.

Somewhere along the way, he forgives himself, and that, too, is a realization that hits him out of nowhere, all at once.

It happens late in the summer, when he and Rachel are sitting across from each other at their little kitchen table, eating strawberry and spinach salads for the third time that week, unable to bear turning on the stove in the sticky, sweltering heat of the city.

She tells him that Blaine is back in New York, having returned to transfer to NYU and finish his degree. Though they don’t talk about it, Kurt has known she and Blaine have kept in touch, were each other’s rocks during their time back in Ohio, and so the fact that Rachel knows this isn’t a surprise. 

He surprises himself, though, in how the news makes him feel.

In a very real way, Blaine will always carry with him the ghosts of Kurt’s regrets, memories of fights and of endings and of damages that can never be forgotten. But Kurt isn’t afraid of that anymore. He’s accepted that he can’t change a single thing about his past, including what happened between them. He’s aware of his role in their demise, knows where he made mistakes and what he could have done differently.

And so instead of fear or anxiety or dread, Blaine’s return to the city elicits an odd sense of relief within Kurt - equal parts relief _for_ Blaine, that he’s getting his life back on track and reaching for his future again, and for himself, too, that he hadn’t been powerful enough, after all, to completely destroy everything.

Kurt hadn’t scared Blaine away from New York. He hadn’t pushed him out of the city permanently, hadn’t caused Blaine’s entire future to crumble after all.

Alongside the relief, surprisingly enough, is hope.

Considering Rachel is close with both Kurt and Blaine, it’s only a matter of time before their paths cross again, and despite any of his worst assumptions, Kurt has real, genuine _hope_ that they can handle it, at the very least.

Maybe even more than that.

It’s a hope that carries him through to the next morning, as he works through a bowl of fruit and honey yogurt, and he pulls up Blaine’s contact in his phone.

He isn’t sure why he does it, but he taps to call, and he presses the phone to his ear, without a single expectation for what may follow.

It rings once, twice, and then-

“Kurt?”

There’s a lift of surprise in Blaine’s voice, slightly crackled through the speaker, but at its core, the sound of Blaine speaking Kurt’s name is the same as it ever was. It’s a softness curled around the edges, a gentle weight cradled within, punctuated with a tender point at its end. Kurt’s never known if Blaine realizes the way he says it, like it matters the most out of any name or out of any other word, but he’s never mentioned it, out of fear of Blaine changing a single thing about it.

And now, what feels like an eternity later, the sound is still exactly the same, igniting a fire of memories, connected and vivid and sure. 

It makes Kurt tremble.

“You answered,” he breathes shakily, at once reduced to the boy on the staircase, moved now merely by Blaine’s voice, as opposed to his smile and the grip of his hand and his kindness on that very first day, so many years ago.

“Of course I did,” Blaine says, as if it’s nothing, as if there isn’t a tangled and butchered history between them, as if the edges aren’t raw and they hadn’t hurt each other worse than anyone else ever has. “I was thinking of reaching out, actually. I’m, uh, back in the city.”

“Yeah. Rachel told me. That’s… I’m really happy for you.”

And he is. No matter what Blaine hopes to find here again, Kurt is glad he’s made it back. He’s always belonged here just as much as Kurt has, after all.

“Thank you.”

A quiet falls between them, and Kurt blames his next admission on the fact that there was never anything but honesty between them in the beginning, and though that had gotten lost along the way, if there is any sort of future to be had between them again at any level, he knows he has to restore it again.

“I miss you.”

He instantly wonders if he should take it back, but he won’t. Instead, he listens to the sharp draw of Blaine’s breath through the phone, and he waits for him to speak again. 

“I miss you, too.”

The words settle comfortably in Kurt’s chest, occupying a space that had gone dusty and forgotten long ago, fitting just right. Vaguely, Kurt knows it shouldn’t be like this. It shouldn’t feel this _good,_ shouldn’t feel this much like the start of something important, but it does, all the same.

This is how being around Blaine has always felt at its core, even when Kurt lost sight of it. Kurt knows that now, and he knows it well, after months spent reflecting and processing, identifying and understanding.

He won’t forget this feeling again.

Blaine offers nothing else, having gone quiet again, and Kurt knows it’s his job to take the leap, to put himself out on a limb. He’s the one that needs to bare himself now, the one that needs to step into whatever this is with openness and with tenderness, to present himself as worthy of being trusted again, even as a friend.

And Kurt _wants_ to be the one to do those things. He wants to seize the opportunity and make the most of it and anchor the untethered love in his chest back to the only man who he ever wants to give it to.

He really, truly wants to, but now that he’s staring the chance in the face, he’s afraid.

“Do you… Can I buy you dinner?” he asks in an attempt to push through the fear, biting his lip, holding his breath, as if his lungs could expel any sort of air if he tried. He’s frozen in this moment, paralyzed by his own courage and his nerve, brought about by a confidence he doesn’t truly feel, hinged upon whatever answer this might bring.

“I’d like that,” Blaine accepts, a softness to his voice that soothes Kurt into breathing again, and that’s that.

They’ll go to dinner, maybe somewhere brand new, that neither of them have ever tried before, fresh and untainted, a blank canvas, and they’ll catch up, and they’ll see. It’s a start, and it’s a big one.

But it’s an easy one, much easier than Kurt could have anticipated, though he knows he can handle it, trusts himself to make the most of it and to do it right, now that he’s absolved himself of the guilt of everything that went wrong. 

He wonders if maybe, just maybe, there’s a chance Blaine could forgive him, too, if he hasn’t already.

And maybe it’ll go right.


End file.
